Movie Madness: Another Famous Portland Oddity

Fresh off our breakfast of penis and robot pancakes, @amandarichards and I went down to Movie Madness, a video rental store (yes, really) which is kept in business pretty much by the pure novelty value of renting physical movies.

Wrap your head around that. A place where you can still go to choose a Blu-Ray, DVD or VHS(!) to take home with you. Then view it, and return it at a later date. How do you like that shit? That's some real Flintstones shit right there. I could smell the hipsters before even setting foot inside.

Besides being a video rental store, Movie Madness serves as a museum of movie history. The costumes and models on display are for the most part not replicas, but the actual costumes and props used in various famous movies.

For example, that's the apartment building from Blade Runner. Made me want to pretend to be a kaiju and smash it while roaring.

A facehugger used in Aliens (1986). The fingernails reminded me that in Alien Covenant it's revealed that human body parts and DNA were used by the android David to engineer the xenomorphs. That's...apparently canon now.

Hard to see due to the reflections, but here's one of the xenomorph heads made for that film. The inner mouth is kind of fucked up. Yet another celebrity whose health was ruined by a lifestyle of booze and drugs.

This guy looks like I walked in on him during some kind of BDSM thing. Where I just slowly back out of the room and we never discuss it.

You like evil bongs? Of course you do. They made more of these movies than Land Before Time sequels. I want to say the Evil Bong sequels have more justification to exist though.

But really? This many? An evil bong isn't even enough of a premise for a single film. To stretch that out to five films is frankly kind of impressive. I'm sure they sold plenty well, maybe I'm the idiot for not cashing in on this idea myself.

More figures. Try to identify which film each is from, and win a prize: Air! The tasty, low calorie snack!

The human remains from Wishmaster. I wonder how I could write this purchase off my taxes.

More figures. I'm glad they don't make these for porn films. Or maybe they do. I am scared to Google.

Oh, what's this? The saucy adult film section, blocked off by a Gate Of Shame™. Just so you know you're crossing the shame threshold when you enter.

Look at all these beautiful yellowing labels. The cracked plastic sheaths, like so many tape condoms, bearing the dried spooge fingerprints which testify to many enjoyable past viewings. Each has a history and a story to tell. And don't get me started on the smell!

If just one movie rental place survives, it should be this. It does seem to be doing well too, and it's plain to see why. Besides the novelty angle, they've got the movie museum angle working for them. It's just another gem in the crown of Portland as a mecca for hipsters, culture connoisseurs and novelty hounds.

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^{Stay Cozy!}